


all this, and love too

by thinksideways



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Canon Era, Infidelity, M/M, Mutually Unrequited, Pining, War, no one knows how to communicate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 10:13:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14306496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinksideways/pseuds/thinksideways
Summary: They meet. Young, brilliant men, but stupid too. Brave in the way young men are when there’s war on the horizon, close enough to taste, and to them it tastes like honor and prestige and freedom. They get drinks. They get drunk.It’s an old story. But it’s new to them.





	all this, and love too

**Author's Note:**

> hi I wrote this because my week has been a living hell and I needed to create something that didn't involve plot or thinking
> 
> title is from Richard Siken's _[scheherazade](http://youngerpoets.yupnet.org/2008/04/22/scheherazade-crush-by-richard-siken/)_

The man Aaron Burr loves is married. Much too married.

This is no place to start a story.

 

***

 

They meet. Young, brilliant men, but stupid too. Brave in the way young men are when there’s war on the horizon, close enough to taste, and to them it tastes like honor and prestige and freedom. They get drinks. They get drunk.

It’s an old story. But it’s new to them.

They kiss, and it’s strange, at first - Hamilton’s face is rough, and he’s _strong_ , too. He presses against Burr, hungry, and Burr almost feels trapped, like this. Caged.  It’s almost disconcerting.

It's new territory, for Burr. Stubble and strength and savagery. The hardness Burr feels when he moves his hand across Hamilton’s groin, that’s new, too. Well. A new angle, at least. The equipment itself is familiar enough.

They don’t fuck that first night but the sensation of Hamilton’s mouth on his, the press of his body, leaves Burr’s head spinning. He tells himself it’s just the alcohol.

 

***

 

The next night Hamilton shows up on Burr’s doorstep unannounced and the way Burr’s heart leaps into his throat when he sees him is kind of fucking terrifying. Hamilton has some excuse for being there that Burr doesn’t listen to. He kisses him instead. Nothing in his life has ever felt like _this_ , a wild, unrestrained chemistry. Like fire, or a hurricane. Some kind of natural disaster, anyway.

He doesn’t know if Hamilton feels it too. He doesn’t ask. He doesn’t really talk much at all, too busy kissing him, and soon enough they’re in the bedroom and then they’re on the bed.

It’s nothing Burr’s ever done before but no instruction manual needed, and Hamilton’s willing enough to offer feedback, to move Burr’s hands and mouth where he wants them.

It’s good. Probably too good. Burr’s hasn’t known Hamilton long but he knows he’s the kind of man who will break your heart.

(It will never occur to Burr that maybe he’s that kind of man, too.)

 

***

 

They keep meeting. Whenever – wherever – they can. It’s risky and wild and _stupid_ , and usually Burr’s none of those things, but Hamilton has a way of just _looking_ at Burr, a heavy, smokey gaze that leaves Burr feeling pinned and pliant. He learns things about Hamilton’s body, places to touch him, ways to move his hips; and Hamilton learns things about his body as well, a knowledge he makes good use of, use that leaves Burr shuddering and seeing stars.

More than that – he learns about Hamilton’s ambitions. His desires.

 _God_ , _I wish there was a war_.

Burr learns all of all this, yet he never learns of Hamilton’s fears. For all he knows, the man is fearless.

It’s somewhere in here where Burr starts to fall in love.

The metaphor of falling has never felt more appropriate. He lies in bed beside Hamilton and feels like he’s walking on the edge of a cliff. Dangerous and bound to fall. Bound to break.

 

***

 

The war they’d wanted comes with all the fanfare expected of brutality, and they’re called to their stations. Hamilton leaves first, and he doesn’t say goodbye when he does. Burr simply goes to call upon him one night and finds the place empty. He has to bite his tongue so he doesn’t cry. There’s blood in his mouth. He swallows.

 

***

 

There’s blood on the soldier’s mouth, but that’s the least of his worries. Burr feels nauseous as he looks at the man’s gut-wound. Something pink and wet has flopped out of the man’s stomach. It’s no way for a man to die.

Burr cuts the man’s throat, instead. No use wasting a bullet on this filthy kind of mercy.  

War is nothing like he’d thought. It’s _ugly_. Flies and vultures follow them.

“Harbingers,” Burr says to another soldier. Half-joking. Half-serious. The other man doesn’t get it. Burr doesn’t bother explaining. He doesn’t see that soldier again.

A mosquito lands on his arm. He swats it, leaving a dark and bloody smear on his arm. Sweat drips down the back of his neck. Disgusting.

 

***

 

Also: war is _boring._ Hours or days or weeks of walking. Plodding. Sometimes there’s horses, which is easier, though after a day’s journey he still stinks and his legs still ache. It’s too much time alone with his thoughts. He tries not to think about Hamilton, or the abrupt way they’d left things. Unfinished. A story, half-written.

 

***

 

They rescue a group of soldiers, snatching them out of the hands of the British. Another day’s work. Men cheer and Burr smiles and for a moment he feels like an actual hero, not just a soldier in need of a shower.

He doesn’t realize Hamilton was one of the men rescued until that night, when the flaps of his tent stir, and Hamilton steps in. His hair is longer, and Burr thinks he’s lost weight. His stomach flips and he can’t breathe right.

“I’m sorry,” Hamilton says. It’s all he says.

Burr would be a fool to forgive him.

But -

Hamilton has a way of stopping time, of erasing everything from Burr’s mind save for his mouth and hands and body. Burr forgives Hamilton when he’s on his knees. Maybe he’d forgiven him before then.  

He’s seen too much death and too many ugly things. He needs something beautiful. Hamilton is beautiful.

He forgives him. It’s too easy.

 

***

 

They find moments. Steal them. There are pockets of time when they are alone together. Burr thinks each time will be the last.

They’re alone in makeshift stables when Hamilton takes Burr’s chin in his hands.

“You’re beautiful,” he says. Burr can’t help but blush. Maybe he isn’t the only one who needs beautiful things.

“I’m falling in love with you,” Hamilton says.

“I’m falling in love with you, too,” Burr says.

Falling in love is an action. _Falling._

A moment of suspension and terror, but the body hasn’t hit ground yet. Having fallen in love, well. The action’s completed. The body’s broken.

 

***

 

He has to stop himself from giving it - giving _them_ \- a name. Naming things gives them power, and this - whatever it is - is already strong enough to crush him.

 

***

 

Natural disasters aren’t sustainable. The world isn’t always in flames. The ocean works in waves, not tsunamis.

They burn fast, they burn hot - but they burn out.

 

***

 

There’s a ball. There are letters. There’s an engagement.

There’s a wedding.

And just like that - the man he loves is married. Much too married.

And Burr’s broken. Fallen.

 

***

Ever since the wedding, Burr gets very drunk, very often.

It’s easier than dealing with anything. Hamilton was a mistake from the start. He can admit that now. A silver-tongued mistake with a smile as devastating as a gunshot.

That fucking mistake shows up on his doorstep. Again. Middle of the fucking night.

Burr wants to leave him standing there but his hands have opened the door before he can process it.

“I’m sorry,” Hamilton says.

It doesn’t work, this time. Not immediately. Burr’s capacity for forgiveness is finite, unlike Hamilton’s capacity for fucking up.

“If you were sorry,” Burr says, “you wouldn’t keep doing this shit.”

He closes the door in Hamilton’s face. He gets a drink.

 

***

 

Hamilton works next door. He works late every night. Burr doesn’t admit to knowing this, but he starts to stay later.

A shadow darkens his doorway. It’s late. They’re the only two people in the office. In the world, maybe.

“Aaron,” says the shadow.

“What do you want?” Burr says. He puts his pen down.

“You,” Hamilton says, then, “I miss you.”

He comes closer. Close enough to touch, yet the distance between them feels like miles.

“I’m not something to be toyed with as you please,” Burr says. There are other things he wants to say but he bites these down. Swallows them. Blood in his mouth.

“I can explain,” Hamilton says.

“I’m sure you could.”

Hamilton could shoot a man in broad daylight and talk his way out of it.

“Aaron,” Hamilton says. Burr hates the way Hamilton says his name. He hates that his stomach flips when he does.

“I think about you. Night and day. I thought...I thought I could get over you. I thought I could move on.”

“You have moved on.”

“I’ve tried.”

“Well, I’ve moved on,” Burr lies.

Hamilton is close, terribly so. He reaches a hand out, cups the back of Burr’s neck. His fingers are warm.

“Then tell me to stop,” Hamilton says, “and I will.”

Hamilton knows his body with a familiarity Burr abhors. This is wrong. It was always wrong.

But he doesn’t say anything, and Hamilton doesn’t stop.

Burr forgives. And when he has Hamilton spread out on his desk, when he’s deep enough inside him that he practically forgets his last name, maybe he loves him again. Something like love. Something like it.

 

***

 

Burr still doesn’t give a name to it. To _them._ To the fact Hamilton comes to his office most nights. They argue and write and fuck. It is rarely tender, which is good. Burr couldn’t stand it if it was.

Once, Hamilton spends the night. This is where it’s bad. This is where things slip on to his tongue and beg to be said. They have time together, privacy, which begets tenderness, which has no place here, between them.

Here, Hamilton kisses him. Looks into his eyes with that horrible, penetrating gaze.

“I can’t get enough of you,” says Hamilton. It’s par for the course. The man is insatiable in all things.

Burr closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at him. He feels Hamilton’s lips on his temple.

“Don’t,” he says softly. He can’t stand it. Hamilton withdraws, and Burr feels his absence immediately. Resists the urge to pull him forward. To kiss him and whisper all the names he doesn’t say.

“I’m sorry.”

Hamilton’s reply is soft, too. The world is quiet here.

 

***

 

It’s not enough, this piecemeal thing they’ve created.

The same stolen moments start to feel like scraps thrown to a starving dog, and he wants to bare his teeth. To rip someone’s throat out.

The easier thing to do would be to refuse. To stop answering the damn door. To stop forgiving. Burr knows this, rationally, the same way he’s always known there is nothing logical about any of this, nothing moral or good. Instead, Hamilton fills some sick hunger inside him.

It takes him a long time to admit this. It takes him even longer to do anything about it.

 

***

 

“I love you,” Hamilton tells Burr. He only tells him this once, when he thinks Burr is asleep.

It’s not enough.

 

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments mean more than I care to admit.
> 
> notes:  
> \- "nothing [he's] ever done before but no instruction manual needed" is from Brokeback Mountain  
> \- "the world is quiet here" is from A Series of Unfortunate Events
> 
> catch me on tumblr @[thinksideways](http://thinksideways.tumblr.com/)


End file.
